Thursday

Mayor Jorge Elorza said Thursday afternoon that Assistant Principal Thomas Bacon resigned because he "understood that termination was on the table."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The assistant principal involved in an altercation with a Central High School student has resigned.

Mayor Jorge Elorza on Thursday afternoon said that Thomas Bacon resigned because he "understood that termination was on the table."

"We all saw the video," Elorza said. "It was very disturbing. We saw enough for us to be very, very concerned."

Providence Supt. Christopher N. Maher said he did not ask Bacon to resign, although he acknowledged that termination was one of several "potential outcomes."

The police are still investigating the incident and no charges have been filed.

The student's mother, Jennifer Pemberton, said she is happy that Bacon has resigned but still wants an apology from the School Department. She said her son Amare Pemberton remains on suspension pending a meeting with school officials.

"He still should be fired and charged," she said of Bacon. "An apology needs to be issued. There needs to be more training [for school staff] as their response was excessive."

Meanwhile, new details emerged about a second, separate incident at the school Monday that also involved an assistant principal scuffling with a student.

In a police report that blacked out the names of students, an assistant principal identified only as "Perry" told a school resource officer about a fight between two students that broke out outside the school. (State records show that a Kenneth Perry is an assistant principal at Central.)

Perry told the officer that he was escorting a student back to Central from another building when a second student "rushed out of the building" and started assaulting the first student.

Perry said that he got one of the students onto a bench and held her "by grabbing the front of her jacket," according to the police report. At that time, the other student went back into the building, and the police arrived.

In the first incident, which also happened Monday, Bacon was seen, in a video that circulated widely on social media, pinning a male student to the floor in the Central High cafeteria as other students surrounded the two and a person says loudly, “Tell him to get off!”

The 15-year-old student, Amare Pemberton, was charged with two counts of simple assault.

Bacon told the police that Amare began throwing punches and elbows at him and a teacher. Bacon said he tried to restrain the student but they both fell to the floor, according to the police report.

But Jennifer Pemberton said Bacon tackled her son and then held him down.

In an effort to calm tensions at the school, Maher met on Thursday to hear the concerns of more than a dozen community leaders, including the NAACP and several youth groups.

Maher promised to do more than put a Band-Aid on the hurt feelings engendered by this incident. He hopes to have a plan in place next week that engages students, educators and members of the community in deeper conversations about solving disputes.

"We're not going to get students in an auditorium and that's it," he said. "We're going to do the challenging work of building relationships."

— With reports from staff writer Paul Edward Parker

—lborg@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7823

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